Friday, September 26, 2008

Cream

20 were selected, by judges who included Nick Bell, Steve Henry, both Al Youngs, and even me. Hence my attendance.

It was much fun. Graham Fink was there, looking like a character from The Matrix, plus Trevor Beattie... and Agyness Deyn and Mark Ronson (they weren't at Cream, just there for a drink at the place it was held).

Stat fans may be interested to hear that 25% of Cream creatives were female, and fully 50% were non-UK.

I have to say that the quality of the books blew me away. Probably the worst ad in any of the books there was better than the best ad I had in my student book, fourteen years ago.

Rory Hill of The Talent Business (Rory did a tip-top job of organising the whole thing by the way) has an interesting theory on this. He reckons that the job market is very tough at the moment, which means young creative teams are taking longer to get jobs, and that’s why the quality of people without jobs is so high.

Scant consolation if you’re living on powdered baked beans I suppose, but there you go.

I think I would have preferred the Ribena one without the endline. Krispy Cremes doesn't excite me, Iceland is an interesting thought but probably would be brought to life better on TV/Online. We did it last year, if thats the best stuff there then it's not a huge improvement in my opinion.

the Iceland ad is great. But it's a classic student mistake of a 'see what you say' visualJust some stunning shots of volcano's, waterfalls, steaming lagoons, paired with that great line would have made it a million times better.

Very brave of the students to let you put their work on here to get a crit from cynical anonymous fuckwits. As Scamp says the work there is better than most student books and we sometimes forget just how difficult it is to have a truly stand out idea while lacking the experience of being in an ad agency. Here's hoping they go to an agency near some of you and give you a right kick up the arse

The trouble with a job market that Scamp describes is that you end up with the people who make it not necessarily being the most talented but the ones who can go longest without gainful employment, ie the posh.

quick question scamp, if the majority of the work being published today in advertising is a pile of cunt, then why is it so hard to get in the industry and the expectation of young creative's so high???????

3.47 - very interesting question. You are quite right that most ads are shit. However, I don't think the reason is that current agency creatives are shit, and should all be fired immediately to make way for the Cream exhibitors. This is worth a proper post. I will do it soon.

if you had a choice of remembering them versus youtube clips, movies, or banter from your mates they're very dull.

scamp, like most other people from the ddb school, you have a very traditional view of ads.

ads are shit. we need to do something better. i don't mean new media and all that, but look at that clip of the chelsea fan who said "yeah" seventy two times. unpolite, illogical, unsophisticated,accidental, but we've all seen and remembered it. much more memorable than any ad i've seen in the last year.

that's what we're up against in our efforts to tattoo a message on the brain.

didn't a visual effects company do that god ad last year? any way. they is all good. you can learn the craft stuff and relevance when you get a job. i'm sure we'll hear about these guys one day. eiher for knife crime or writing an ad.

It would be lovely to come up with ideas for virals featuring some Chelsea twat but unfortunately we have a job to do aand that is to do the best work possible for the client, but you wouldn't know that because your probably in your bedroom most of the time thinking up ways of getting a swear word into a YouTube clip, yeah your well cutting edge.

10.24 - oh dear, that does make me look very sad, doesn't it. I do sometimes ask people if they read Scamp, I suppose I'm curious to know what they think of it. Especially if they don't know it's me who writes the thing; I'm hoping to get some truthful feedback. Just like when I have an ad out, I sometimes ask civilians if they've seen it. Looking for approval no doubt. (Usually they haven't seen it).

Scamp - I know several people that do the same, so it's not that weird - it's good to know what people think. But just imagine when the person you ask says it's shit and they hate it, only to find out the next day that it was your ad. It's a bit mean.

Bentos - why's that so weird? Surely it's fair to argue that adverts aren't just competing with other adverts for peoples' attention any more? (And no, it's also true to say that they never were, but people have more options than ever, etc, etc.) If you want people to take the time to pay attention to your ad, remember it and maybe even act on it, then yep, we absolutely are competing with that Chelsea chav - we're competing with everything out there that's of interest to people. No?

Hmmm, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. I'd expect most people would like to think that advertising is about something a little more subtle than getting someone to jump up from their sofa that very second and go down the shops to buy what you're selling.

Or even be able to recall it in the same way they would some piece of entertainment they'd deliberately sought out.